Renee Martin - The Risk Takers: 16 Women and Men Who Built Great Businesses Share Their Entrepreneurial Strategies For Success

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Table of Contents

Praise for The Risk Takers

Don and Renee Martin want to remind you that even in these tough times, the American dream is alive and well. The accomplished entrepreneurs they have interviewed for The Risk Takers will teach you, in their own words, how persistence and creativity can lead to success. Trust your gut and read this book!

Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The One Minute
Manager and The One Minute Entrepreneur

The Risk Takers is a must-read, particularly as our economy goes through its current strains. It is, after all, the entrepreneurs, such as those documented in the book, who will lead our economy out of the darkness and back to the sunshine. It is an easy read, with great lessons throughout.

James G. Ellis, Dean Marshall School of Business,
University of Southern California

The Risk Takers delivers a treasure chest of ideas and strategies that make it an essential tool for those seeking to start or grow their own business. A great read filled with engaging stories of some of Americas most successful entrepreneurs.

Peter V. Ueberroth, Man of the Year, Time Magazine 1984;
President and CEO, Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee;
Former Commissioner of Major League Baseball in U.S.

What amazing stories of hope, tenacity, and courage by some of Americas greatest entrepreneurs. Youll be entertained and inspired by these remarkable men and women who defied conventional wisdom and overcame significant adversity on their way to success. The book will encourage any budding entrepreneur to just start.

Linda A. Livingstone, Dean and Professor of Management,
Graziadio School of Business & Management, Pepperdine University

The Risk Takers tells the story behind the story of some of Americas most successful entrepreneurs, from humble beginnings to dreams come true. Renee and Don Martin will surely inspire entrepreneurs at any age or any stage. Wonderful, well-told stories show you how to turn your dream into the American Dream. This book is a must for anyone ready to trust their gut!

Harvey Mackay, New York Times #1 bestselling author
of Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive

Not since Napoleon Hill ( Think and Grow Rich ) has anyone captured the secrets on how real people become successful. A must-read for anybody that has dreams about becoming an outstanding entrepreneur.

Stephen Alan Odell, Co-Owner & CEO,
Sugar Foods Corporation (Sweet N Low)

The future belongs to the risk takers, not the security seekers, and these stories will inspire you to take intelligent risks in the directions of your dreams.

Brian Tracy, New York Times bestselling author

There has never been a time in history that was hungrier for the entrepreneurs creativity and passion to serve others needs than today. At just the right time, Don Martin has captured the nuts and bolts of how entrepreneurs think and act with stories that inspire and empower those who have dreamed of creating something special. It is a book whose time has come. It should be on the reading list of anyone who is seeking direction for a time of peril such as the opening decade of the 21st Century.

James R. Wilburn, Dean, School of Public Policy,
Former Dean, Graziadio School of Business and
Management, Pepperdine University

Don Martin has lived the quintessential American Dream and has written a powerful and inspiring story of entrepreneurship, ingenuity and perseverance. In this post Great Recession era, his timely and enduring advice is more relevant than ever.

Anil Puri, Dean, Mihaylo College of Business and
Economics, California State University, Fullerton

Wherever you see a successful
business, someone once made
a courageous decision.

Peter F. Drucker, university professor
and author of thirty-nine books, including
Managing for Results: Economic Tasks
and Risk-taking Decisions (1964) and
The Effective Executive (1966)

CHAPTER 1

The American Dream

I believe that entrepreneurs all have sort of the same soul and that they are self-starters, unafraid, willing to take risks and accept the consequences. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. But they are always able to bounce back. Every entrepreneur I know is cut from the same cloth.

Alan Rypinski, founder of Armor All

A mericans are worried. Jobs once viewed as secure now seem vulnerable. Plans for starting a business have been put on the back burner. Unsure how to react to their current reality, most Americans just wait.

We have always been a nation of entrepreneurs, and if we are to rebuild our economy, we must reinvigorate the culture and mind-set that have built that tradition. My wife, Renee, and I wrote The Risk Takers because we want to remind readers about the power of the entrepreneurial spirit, the promise of the American Dream. What better way to ignite that spirit than to showcase the inspiring stories of the sixteen remarkable men and women profiled in The Risk Takers ? These were ordinary men and women who started with very little, opted to strike out on their own, and struggled with disappointment and failure yet managed to overcome adversity and build hugely successful multi-million-dollar companies.

We personally interviewed some of the most successful entrepreneurs in America today. Youll meet the fascinating founders of companies most Americans will recognize, including Amys Kitchen, Curves, Geek Squad, Kinkos, Liz Lange Maternity, Paul Mitchell, Spanx, and nine others. They started with just a good idea, defied the conventional wisdom time and again, and trusted their gut when nobody else would. Along the way, they took both great strides and costly missteps, all part of the learning process. Each believed in his or her company and willed it to succeed. Together, their stories prove that even in the bleakest of circumstances, inspired business ideas can prevail when a risk-taking entrepreneur has enough faith, drive, and resilience. We wrote The Risk Takers to ignite that same spirit and faith in you.

The idea to write my third book came to me shortly after I sold my own business. My personal path toward entrepreneurship had begun more than four decades earlier with a part-time job. As a young man with no money, Id worked to pay my way toward a college degree by selling insurance. After graduation, I convinced the owner of the tiny, one-man insurance agency to sell me his business. Because I had no funds, he accepted my signed note for $10,000 with the promise to repay him from my future earnings.

Over the next several decades, I built that little agency into an insurance brokerage that generated over $200 million in annual revenue. Then forty years later, I sold my privately held business, The Cal-Surance Companies, to Brown & Brown, a New York Stock Exchange company, for $64.5 million in cash.

Shortly after, I was having a discussion with one of my best friends and a member of my board of advisors. He asked, Now that youve sold the company, what are your plans? I knew I didnt want to start another business. I had just spent forty years running one and needed a change. My friend said to me, Don, youre a hammer looking for a nail. With your energy level, if you dont find something meaningful, youll drive Renee crazy. I realized he was right and told myself something would present itself.

A few weeks later, I stopped by to visit with my daughter and her husband one Saturday. Nick, my son-in-law, had just turned thirty and happened to be hosting several of his business-school fraternity brothers that day. Just a few years removed from graduate school, they had all begun careers of their own. By way of introducing me, Nick told them about the recent sale of my company, and they started to ply me with questions and wanted to hear my story.

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